Why invest in renewables?

UK vision for clean growth strategy

The UK Government has committed to developing onshore and offshore wind power, as renewables become a more dominant part of the energy mix.

By 2020, the UK Government has a target that 15% of energy will come from renewable sources. The development of renewables is also vital in helping the UK reach its target of reducing CO2 emissions by 80% (from 1990 levels) by 2050.

We are helping the UK Government make significant progress towards these goals through our investment in renewable technologies.

Scotland’s vision for renewables

The Scottish Government wants 100% of electricity to come from renewables by 2020 – and it’s already on its way to achieving this: in 2017, more than two-thirds of electricity came from green schemes[1].

We’re focusing most of our efforts in Scotland, as policy, public opinion and wind conditions here are more favourable to onshore wind development. We opened our new office in Edinburgh in 2017 and now have more than 1.5 GW of wind power projects in planning and development.

As part of EDF Energy, we are the largest generator of low carbon electricity in Scotland.

Our investment in renewables

We’re developing innovative new technologies – such as, modern and efficient wind turbines – to bring costs down for consumers.

Our offshore wind farm at Blyth is a demonstrator site. It’s where we are testing and proving new and emerging technologies. For instance, the turbines are built on self-floating and submersible foundations – a first for an offshore wind farm. In another first, we are using new 66kV cable technology to connect the wind farm to the onshore substation. This makes it cheaper, as fewer ‘feeder’ cables are needed to connect the turbines to one another.